The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 07 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Another good remedy for wife-beating is the abolition of the Catholic
Church. We should also do away with the idea that a marriage is a
sacrament, and that there is any God who is rendered happy by seeing a
husband and wife live together, although the husband gets most of his
earthly enjoyment from whipping his wife. No woman should live with
a man a moment after he has struck her. Just as the idea of liberty
enlarges, confidence in the whip and fist, in the kick and blow, will
diminish. Delaware occupies toward freethinkers precisely the same
position that a wife-beater does toward the wife. Delaware knows that
there are no reasons sufficient to uphold Christianity, consequently
these reasons are supplemented with the pillory and the whipping-post.
The whipping-post is considered one of God's arguments, and the pillory
is a kind of moral suasion, the use of which fills heaven with a kind
of holy and serene delight. I am opposed to the religion of brute force,
but all these frightful things have grown principally out of a belief in
eternal punishment and out of the further idea that a certain belief is
necessary to avoid eternal pain.
If Christianity is right, Delaware is right. If God will damn every body
forever simply for being intellectually honest, surely he ought to
allow the good people of Delaware to imprison the same gentleman for two
months. Of course there are thousands and thousands of good people in
Delaware, people who have been in other States, people who have listened
to Republican speeches, people who have read the works of scientists,
who hold the laws of 1740 in utter abhorrence; people who pity Judge
Comegys and who have a kind of sympathy for the grand jury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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